How to protect against members posting spam?

ColdAsIce · 10 May 2013 at 10:33

Just recently setup my own phpbb forum. Today I have had 3 new signups posting advertising crap. What is the best way to protect against this?

Hyburnate · 10 May 2013 at 10:34

Do you have a captcha on? Try an add-on of a Captcha

uniQ · 10 May 2013 at 10:39

- Add captcha or a Q&A to sign up
- New members can't post links until x amount of posts

etc

ilcp · 10 May 2013 at 10:40

usually in the backend of phpbb, they allow turning on of captch as far as I remember.

ColdAsIce · 10 May 2013 at 10:44

Pretty sure captcha is already turned on

does that mean someone is physically signing up to post this crap?

AJK · 10 May 2013 at 11:09

ColdAsIce said:
Pretty sure captcha is already turned on does that mean someone is physically signing up to post this crap?

No, captchas aren't foolproof. They will reduce the amount of spam you get, but won't eliminate it completely.

Does phpBB have an option to require new members to be approved before they can post? If so, turn that on. You'll still have to deal with the spam, but at least it won't go public before you do.

Confused · 10 May 2013 at 11:30

The graphic captchas are rubbish. Re-Captcha even more so.

Enable the Q&A option, and set up a few questions, and change them every couple of months.

When I did this, it basically stopped spam overnight.

ColdAsIce · 10 May 2013 at 11:46

Confused said:
The graphic captchas are rubbish. Re-Captcha even more so.

Enable the Q&A option, and set up a few questions, and change them every couple of months.

When I did this, it basically stopped spam overnight.

Nice idea will look to set this up.

For the moment I have made new members go into the newly registered members group. From here they are new members until after their first post.

That first post has to be approved by a moderator before posting.

Thanks everyone.

iamtheoneneo · 10 May 2013 at 14:08

have you tried mollom? I think you should be able to get it for phpbb. We ran it on our forum and the spam stopped ,then we just delete the spam accounts each morning. Captcha stuff is pretty uselesss with the bots.

ColdAsIce · 13 May 2013 at 15:48

Just to update, I changed to the Q&A and used questions such as pick the 1st, middle and last letter from this word: I would then create a completely made up word with no spaced.

Since then no bot signups. Thanks guys.

ilcp · 14 May 2013 at 21:37

q: why is captcha etc useless? surely bots are not able to read the captcha phrases or am i missing something?

AJK · 15 May 2013 at 08:47

ilcp said:
q: why is captcha etc useless? surely bots are not able to read the captcha phrases or am i missing something?

Some captchas are too easy and bots can read them. (If you see a captcha that looks "too easy", ie. you can instantly decipher it without any thought, chances are a computer can do it too!)

Also, some bots use humans to do it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CAPTCHA#Human_solvers

Fallen god · 17 May 2013 at 21:51

ilcp said:
q: why is captcha etc useless? surely bots are not able to read the captcha phrases or am i missing something?

From what I have learnt a lot of bots are actual better then humans at captcha.

annaharris · 21 May 2013 at 13:49

Captcha is the best solution for this.

Rroff · 21 May 2013 at 13:53

tbh the only really effective solution is a custom captcha/security implementation (I modified the create account page on mine with invisible fields that if filled out = automatic rejection but it still only filters out 60-70% of the spam bots) - I tried various off the shelf captchas and wasn't long before the spam bots were breezing past them like they weren't even there - I have it so accounts require approval before being activated but get dozens of spam accounts signed up per day.

Dark_Injection · 21 May 2013 at 17:25

Are they posting actual 'crap' or are they simply linking to affiliate based content? If the latter then you can re-affiliate their links and earn commission instead of them taking commission with a service like YieldKit.

yhack · 25 May 2013 at 10:05

Dark_Injection said:
Are they posting actual 'crap' or are they simply linking to affiliate based content? If the latter then you can re-affiliate their links and earn commission instead of them taking commission with a service like YieldKit.

I see what you did there.

Dark_Injection · 27 May 2013 at 17:10

yhack said:
I see what you did there.

I tried to solve a problem. Albeit I threw in a company name, but what I suggested is true and that is one benefit of YieldKit. Affiliate spam is removed, or atleast transfered to the publisher so any profit made from a link goes to the site that hosted it, not the individual who spammed.